When creating a virtual representation of an object, high quality object models created from real world scanned models, due to their nature, usually include millions of polygons. This is usually because slight variations in detected depth or lighting may result in the creation of a number of extra polygons which are not ultimately necessary in the object model. These models require a large amount of memory to store and/or manipulate. In order to better serve their purposes, object models often should have a much lower polycount (count of polygons) than they are initially created with. Additionally, they may need to have specific edgeflows in order to be more easily animated, or further detailed.
In order to create useful object models, the mesh associated with an object model often needs to be retopologized from a high resolution mesh to a low resolution mesh. Retopology is the process of rebuilding a mesh of an object model in order to reduce polygon count. Retopology is widely used by digital sculptors to convert their object models into usable assets in game, film, or other electronic projects. Retopology can be used to remove discrepancies from an object model, such as discontinuities and/or repeated details. Conventionally, retopology is a time-intensive process that requires manual (often subjective) analysis and editing by an artist. Because this process requires identification of edges, which requires subjective interpretation to be provided by an artist, the process has conventionally not been able to be automated.
Embodiments of the invention address these and other problems, individually and collectively.